Hyphens in french domain names

[nicb5]

Hi guys

Here is some information of interest concerning hyphens in french domain names. There are some mixed views on this and I will try to give you an unbiased honest opinion. Hyphens in french are not as bad as for english ascii domains, in fact they can even out perform non-hyphened domains. Why is that you say? Because some words in french are written with an hyphen. Take for example the word "Grandmother", in french that is "Grand-mère" and only that. "Grandmère" is not only regarded as a big typo, its not even a word! But be careful! Some people go and reg keyword combos with an hyphen and in that case, I believe it is as bad as an hyphen in ascii domains. Just be sure to search either a dictionary or a search engine with the whole combo in quotes. If you get more than say 300 000 results it is surely a word or a commonly used combo and you should be safe with that. If you still need more convincing, one of my best IDN performer is an hyphen seperated french word. It is not indexed in a SE and gets anywhere from 35-75 type-ins per month.

Thank you for reading. I'm hoping this will help some of you!
Be sure to share your views on this too!
Nick

[Asiaplay]

Hi Nick,

Appreciate this post as well... thanks for sharing... as now I know hyphen's can be a viable alternative for French (and sometimes are even better).

Cheers - Asiaplay...

[jacksonm]

Thanks for that info.

Moral of the story: Don't screw with the hyphen, just leave it as it is or is not.

.

[Wot]

Vis-à-vis.com

[nicb5]

Thanks for the replies

hehe that's a good one Wot. It would however be considered an ASCII horror I imagine. What's frustrating is that people will go and buy vis-a-vis.com for xxx to x,xxx$ and wouldn't go higher than xx$ for the correct spelling vis-à-vis.com. Oh well i'm guessing it is bound to change and that people next year will spend hours searching for a good latin IDN only to realize theyre all gone


Little off topic:
I realize it can be annoying to you guys that I speak of French IDNs or simply the French language all the time. I simply am doing this because I feel it's the area I can contribute the most as a newbie on this forum, not to piss some people off. It's weird how some of the guys here take it as an attack on their choice of language or script... Anyway Explanation/Rant over now

Nick

[Asiaplay]

Hi Nick,

Not at all... actually it is very refreshing to have someone talk on French IDNs - a balance across all IDNs is great and is something that was missing here really..
Thanks for making up the balance... please continue (I am learning & enjoying your posts a lot).

Cheers & thanks again - Asiaplay.

PS: now just hoping I can become fluent in French, in the same length of time it takes to read your posts

Good quote Jacksonm ... something I will remember now... lol...

[jacksonm]

Originally Posted by nicb5

Little off topic:
I realize it can be annoying to you guys that I speak of French IDNs or simply the French language all the time. I simply am doing this because I feel it's the area I can contribute the most as a newbie on this forum, not to piss some people off. It's weird how some of the guys here take it as an attack on their choice of language or script... Anyway Explanation/Rant over now

Nick

Nick, french has got to be the most controversial language on the forum. I really do not understand why. Several of the players in the french arena are fairly ill behaved folks, just use the search function for "french" or "francophone" or "senegal" or "dabsi" and you will see what I mean.

I consider french just as much an opportunity as anything else, and only wish I had some more good french domains.

As it is, I only managed to pick up some weak stuff like:

crèmebrûlée.com
côtedor.com
soufflé.com
rémy.net
discothèque.net


That's about the extent of my french portfolio! A couple of them even potentially have TM issues, depending on how they are used.

Anyhow, I think any language tips from native speakers is highly appreciated.

.

[thefabfive]

Little off topic:
I realize it can be annoying to you guys that I speak of French IDNs or simply the French language all the time. I simply am doing this because I feel it's the area I can contribute the most as a newbie on this forum, not to piss some people off. It's weird how some of the guys here take it as an attack on their choice of language or script... Anyway Explanation/Rant over now

Nick

Many of us don't have expertise in even one foreign language. It is always welcome to hear expert opinions from those with an intimate knowledge of the language and culture. Keep up the good work.

[sunsei21]

keep up the good work nick diversity is the key with idns

[IDNCowboy]

I think we need to see more traffic on our unhyphenated idns before we invest in hyphenated ones.

[tgtbtu2]

Originally Posted by IDNCowboy

I think we need to see more traffic on our unhyphenated idns before we invest in hyphenated ones.

Originally Posted by IDNCowboy

I think we need to see more traffic on our unhyphenated idns before we invest in hyphenated ones.

We already do, probably. I have only one in both:
I have télécharge.net and telecharge.net
unaccented one gets anything between 3000-2500 a month- I recently took it off sedo and then back so the stats at sedo currently are showing less but historical data is available. 60% of traffic comes from france, the rest from algeria, canada and other french speaking.
accented one gradually catchching up but ppc is much higher for it for some reason.
others do well too.

[IDNCowboy]

Originally Posted by tgtbtu2

We already do, probably. I have only one in both:
I have télécharge.net and telecharge.net
unhyphenated one gets anything between 3000-2500 a month- I recently took it off sedo and then back so the stats at sedo currently are showing less but historical data is available. 60% of traffic comes from france, the rest from algeria, canada and other french speaking.
hyphenated one gradually catchching up but ppc is much higher for it for some reason.
others do well too.

aye sorry i just woke up
i thought you were talking about "-"

[tgtbtu2]

Originally Posted by IDNCowboy

aye sorry i just woke up
i thought you were talking about "-"

My bad. sorry, you're right. I am doing something in the middle so this was off topic. However it's interesting to compare same ascii with idn.

[nicb5]

Originally Posted by jacksonm

Nick, french has got to be the most controversial language on the forum. I really do not understand why. Several of the players in the french arena are fairly ill behaved folks, just use the search function for "french" or "francophone" or "senegal" or "dabsi" and you will see what I mean.

I consider french just as much an opportunity as anything else, and only wish I had some more good french domains.

As it is, I only managed to pick up some weak stuff like:

crèmebrûlée.com
côtedor.com
soufflé.com
rémy.net
discothèque.net


That's about the extent of my french portfolio! A couple of them even potentially have TM issues, depending on how they are used.

Anyhow, I think any language tips from native speakers is highly appreciated.

.

Yeah I was quite aware of the Dabsi affair before registering here. I had been following this board for a while before I finally created an account. I think it is a shame for any language or script market to have ill-repute people representing a part of it. Still, I think this place has a lot of serious and interesting people, but most important: you guys are knowledgable! I'll be staying over here because of that . I'm willing to learn too.

As for your french names, they aren't that weak. The only one I see as problematic concerning development is soufflé. The rest offers good end-user sale opportunity (as long as no tm infriging content) and also a few development opportunities.

Crème Brûlée is a very popular recipe. Very easy to create a website with recipe and variations, pictures and user opinions.

Côte d'or is a Bourgogne department. I see tons of possibilities here. Be aware of the TM though.

Soufflé will be pretty hard to get off the ground for it is first interpretted as a past tense conjugated verb... I see this more as a novelty name. I think the best would be to use it as a short hand for "verre soufflé" which is the art of blown glass. Maybe an e-mag or a site with pictures of that. There is always a way out

Rémy is a not so used first name AND last name. Still, a few end user possibilities I guess.

Discothèque is pretty good name! It's pretty easy to see what can be done with this.

Here is a tip for all of you guys : words that end with é, ée, és and ées are almost never nouns, mostly past tense conjugated verbs, which isn't good. If you wanna be safe, steer away from them.

Originally Posted by IDNCowboy

I think we need to see more traffic on our unhyphenated idns before we invest in hyphenated ones.

I agree type-in traffic is pretty much on the low side for the moment for almost any french or even latin IDNs. However, from what I gather from my stats, my hyphenated words do as good as my regular words, one of them even does better than average. So I must disagree with that statement. But like in mentionned in my original post, hyphenated keyword combos really aren't good, so nobody should really be investing in them. If you meant hyphenated keyword combos, then I agree with what you said.

Originally Posted by tgtbtu2

However it's interesting to compare same ascii with idn.

Very true. It is one of the keys to latin IDNs. Thanks for sharing stats. I LOVE stats

Also thanks to Asiaplay, jacksonm, thefabfive ans sunsei21 for the kind words. Appreciated really.

Nick

[jacksonm]

Originally Posted by nicb5

Côte d'or is a Bourgogne department. I see tons of possibilities here. Be aware of the TM though.

Wouldn't it be better to have Côte-dor.com, though, according to your earlier comment? of course, it's already taken...

.

[nicb5]

Originally Posted by jacksonm

Wouldn't it be better to have Côte-dor.com, though, according to your earlier comment? of course, it's already taken...

.

Yeah when it's a word or a location it's better imo. But I'd still say hold on to it...
When you get it dev'd you'll easily make back what you spent for it. It's not the end of the world if you don't get the hyphen in... but for future geos or locations try to get them in.